What ridiculously old school thing have your parents said or done lately?

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Darkus185@reddit

Printing out big airline tickets on A4.

Well what if you lose your phone or your battery dies?

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BrightSignal8032@reddit

I find it so cute when I see people with these. And they have them in little plastic wallets

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NecroVelcro@reddit

Show her some traumatic images of drink drinking deaths and ask her why she's so desperate to raise the risk of that for you and others.

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Darkus185@reddit

Nah unfortunately she is so beholden to the bottle now that any sort of tactic like that would just be laughed off.

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pickindim_kmet@reddit

Same here. I've been caught out once before when my phone failed to cooperate and it saved me. At least I'm saving on printer ink now.

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E420CDI@reddit

Printing out big airline tickets on A4

My mum insists on printing out her boarding passes, despite not having a printer and having to beg friends to print them out for her every time she flies.

Despite me showing her how to do so, she refuses to use digital boarding passes on the airline apps because "what if my phone dies?"

"Well you make sure it doesn't die. It's called battery management. Your logic is like refusing to drive your car because what if you run out of petrol?" 🤷‍♂️

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Darkus185@reddit

Yeh what if you lose your phone??

Aw, you should let her chatter away. It's one of the saddest things about society that people don't talk anymore. My teenager hates it when I talk to strangers in a queue! I once crossed the road outside our house to speak to an elderly lady who had been sat there for an hour to make sure she was OK. My daughter actually tried to stop me going out the door.

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PsychologicalEbb3891@reddit

I love those casual chats with strangers, you learn so much and sadly, for some people, you may have been the only human contact that day, or longer. My teenager thinks I'm barking when I do it, but she has starting to join in.

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ThrustersToFull@reddit

Hahaha teenagers are the worst!

Not my parents but an old couple flagged me down on a busy road. I was cycling through a busy city with my daughter in a trailer I was towing.

This is true.

sock_cooker@reddit

When I was little, I got a film camera for Christmas, I was so chuffed with it. It was completely manual- manual focus, manual exposure. As it happened, a rose grew in our garden that day, so I used it as a subject- I experimented with different apertures and shutter speeds, I was being scientific about it.

My Dad called 50p "ten bob

ThrustersToFull@reddit

My dad doesn't quite do that but he's genuienly stunned by how much things cost. My mum died in 2018 and I discovered immediately afterwards that she was handling all the money (and had been, since before I was born) because he literally couldn't cope.

"What do you mean the gas and power bill is over £100 a month?! That is almost as much as a factory!!!"
"Why are you spending all of that on cheese?! Is it the best cheese in the world?!"
"You spent £2000 on a computer??!!?!? Are you mad?!!?!?"

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DameKumquat@reddit

My dad first had to write a CV at the age of 63. Or rather, he got me to do it. And an application form. He couldn't believe how much paperwork was required to go from the large oil company he'd worked for since I was born, to do the same job for a contractor for two years before retirement.

I see his point.

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withywoodwitch@reddit

I had to write a CV for my father when he was in his early 60s. He wrote it like an informal chat and I had to do so much bullshit trying to make it official. Sidenote: it broke my heart to see the shit jobs he had to do in order to support his family early on. He's dead now, died in 2011 at a mere 68 years of age, but I'm glad I was able to sort out red tape for him when it came to Attendance Allowance forms and the like. It's not much after all he did for us but I was glad I could do it

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GordonLivingstone@reddit

Computers have made all such processes more paperwork intensive. (Even if the paper is virtual).

It used to be impractical to generate pages and pages of documents. Companies would post you a three page printed application form to which you might add a hand written cover letter. CVs weren't really a thing.

Nowadays, the technology means that individuals are expected to produce application packages that would have needed a whole secretarial department in the past. With AI, we will have applicants generating small novels which in turn will be assessed by the employer's AI before the application has really gone anywhere.

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DameKumquat@reddit

There was a saying about uni lectures - ideas go from the lecturer's mouth to the students notes, without passing through the minds of either. Job applications are probably even worse for that.

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Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

At my last job where I was manager I handed in my notice and within the first 24 hours we had 1559 applications for my role.

We weren’t allowed to read CVs until they’d gone through the ai system. The ai system narrowed it all down to people with right to work, no crim record, relevant experience, age preference, living locally etc and THEN we could read them.

Ai is doing 90% of the work

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LambonaHam@reddit

1500 applications is a staggering number, but believable.

After filtering out people with no right to work, or a criminal record, etc what was the final tally?

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Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

678! So many were international students who legally couldn’t work the hours, weren’t here legally or had criminal records.

It went down to 52 once experience and availability filters were placed on it.

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Amazing-Heron-105@reddit

We weren’t allowed to read CVs until they’d gone through the ai system. The ai system narrowed it all down to people with right to work, no crim record, relevant experience, age preference, living locally etc and THEN we could read them.

Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

No you can’t, we shred your CVs and put them in the bin they’re a GPDR breach and we don’t have time to read them. The ai bots scan digital CVs now and filter out ones with relevant experience, no crim record, perfect availability, right to work etc and THEN we read them.

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Pedantichrist@reddit

And then you say 'Ah yes, that's the young girl who came in and showed initiative, and I helped.

If you helping someone does not make you more likely to help them again then you are either a bot or you are unaware of your own behaviour.

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Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

We LEGALLY cannot keep paper cvs what’s not clicking

And no I won’t think “oh this young girl takes initiative”

I’d think

“This young girl has tried bless her but she can’t do things by the books and has an outdated way of thinking so will probably have difficulty understanding rules and policies as a member of staff and won’t do things correctly”

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Pedantichrist@reddit

Three things:

1: keeping the CV is irrelevant, she will have applied online after speaking with you, she does but drop off a CV and walk away.

GDPR is what I did. If you think that you are not able to keep paper CVs then you simply do not understand GDPR. I would not expect anyone to metro it, there is no advantage to you keeping it, but if you believe what you have said, ABs or is part of your job, you need retraining.
That’s you. Factually people who see applicants and, crucially, who help applicants do something (even if that is just directions to the toilet) will apply a more positive outlook on those applicants. This works especially well, because invested effort bias works whilst many voting staff will believe that it dos not, so they do not allow for it.

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LambonaHam@reddit

GDPR states that you can only retain personal details (e.g. a CV) so long as it's necessary. If the application process is online, then a paper CV is unnecessary as soon as it's handed over.

You're also assuming the person who does the hiring, is the same one who received the CV. Generally it would be a receptionist that takes post / deals with walk-ins.

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Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

Yes it is because do you seriously expect us to stop everything we’re doing to immediately read the cv THEN dispose of it which can take over an hour just so we don’t have to shred it immediately and dispose of it because the other option is we get arrested and fined for breaching gdpr because we legally cannot store the cv or hold it
You cannot keep all papers and follow gdpr, cvs are excluded
You’ve just made that up

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Pedantichrist@reddit

1 She does not care whether you read the CV or not, this is not about you reading it, it about seeing you. Well moment not you, bout someone with hiring responsibilities.

2 you are just wrong about this. Try Google.

3 as I say, it works well because folk are so sure they are not swayed. Whole heap of Dunning Kruger going in with you here.

Arguing in the internet is pointless and your downvotes do not make you right. Cheerio.

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Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

We do not give a fuck about seeing someone apply in person, we do not want and legally can’t hold your CV so now we can’t do our job properly because you have come in and given us a paper cv that we’ll immediately need to shred and dispose of instead of serving customers, seeing clients and getting our job done because you couldn’t be arsed to follow the rules everyone else has successfully followed and affected the quality of service at the job.
It doesn’t work well, it hasn’t worked well for 30 years get with the times

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bill_end@reddit

I agree that dropping CVs in at workplaces is no longer the done thing, but how would it breach GDPR to handle a paper CV rather than one submitted online?

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Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

Because we don’t have the facilities to store a physical copy that absolutely anyone in the building can access

So your child walked in, asked for a job / application, went back later and dropped off their CV, and then was granted the job?

Does this school only have three employees?

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pajamakitten@reddit

Sure. You could also apply a negative bias here though.

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Pedantichrist@reddit

GordonLivingstone@reddit

Go a bit further back (pre Thatcher) and were only allowed to take a limited amount of money out of the country anyway. £50 in 1966.

Mind you, debit cards didn't exist, credit cards were for the few and people worked mainly in cash - and cheques for bigger purchases. This applied within the UK as much as abroad. And normal bank cheques wouldn't work abroad. We were all used to setting a budget and carrying that much money with us.

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PigsAreTastyFood@reddit

Using the word coloured.

Or using "Red Indians" for Native Americans

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Lady-Callipygian@reddit

My in-laws still have a very old dark brown shag pile carpet in their snug. I’m not going to tell you the original name of the carpet colour (I’m pretty sure you can guess) 🤦‍♀️ but whilst discussing redecorating my in-laws told me how well their “* brown carpet has aged” 🤦‍♀️

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Afraid_Simple_4061@reddit

My mum can't understand why my daughter (25) hasn't bought a house yet and is still living with us. My daughter is a teaching assistant.

My mum (75) then proceeded to tell me that their first house cost £6k (small 2 bed terrace, S.E. London) but my dad only earned £17 per week and they managed.

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Top-Aspect-8827@reddit (OP)

Big up to your daughter, a fellow TA!

Luckily my parents understand that house buying is pretty much out of the question for me as a single TA.

£6k?! Absolutely insane. Have you done the conversion to what that is today?

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lost-on-autobahn@reddit

Assuming they were 25 years old when they purchased the house it would have been 1976 and according to the Bank of England inflation calculator £6000 then is £40965 in today’s money. Which just shows how housing has become prohibitively expensive for today’s young adults

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Only_Fig4582@reddit

You can still find one for £30k ish in parts of County Durham. Not a nice house and not in a nice area but yes,still a house.

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SilverellaUK@reddit

There must have been a big jump in property prices soon after that. We paid £15,000 for a new 3 bed semi in East Yorkshire in 1980. OP's parents house would have been worth upwards of £20,000.

Our first mortgage rate (endowment) was 15.5%. Some of our neighbours from then still live in the same houses. Similar houses today are £210,000.

House prices were quite volatile. We sold in 1987 for £26,500 - the best price in the street, and bought a far inferior 3 bed semi in the South West for £41,500. I can't remember the rate. I began work at a building society and when I could swap to a staff mortgage (4%) after a year the house was valued at £63,000. I remember we were gazumped on one house and then when we were looking again, we would arrive to a viewing to see a note on the door No more viewings. House sold.

We sold a year later for £51,000. Probably worth £250,000 today.

So although, to us, the houses seemed expensive at the time, we could get a 90% mortgage calculated on 3x first earners salary or 2.5x first earners salary plus 1x second earners salary. That wouldn't go too far in today's market.

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ExcitementKooky418@reddit

What you've also got to take into account is the small wage growth compared to the large house price growth.

£17 a week is £884 a year so for a 6k house that just over 6 times annual salary

I'll pass the big up on, she is sen ta, for that extra bit of stress.

Without interest it worked out to £20 a month over 25 years... but bless, my dad only earned £17 per week. I think he was a hospital porter, but he may have been an ambulance driver at that point. My mum was working then too, as a pharmacy technician or something like that.

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heroics-delta8s@reddit

House ownership in the sixties was exceptionally rare for anyone even remotely working class. Many working class people were still living in slums then.

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Tupsarratum@reddit

I suspect she is misremembering here - the numbers seem off. £17 a week is only £885 a year - so a house of £6k would be quite a stretch.

A reasonable wage in the mid 70s is more like £2,000.

In the seventies people on low wages had many more renting options including social housing. I don't think a teaching assistant would have expected to buy a house on her own in her twenties then.

Being charitable he was probably on £17 a week when they first got today and that's the figure she remembers.

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ashyboi5000@reddit

Going on the old wife's tale of a mortgage being 3-3.5x annual income those figures don't quite stack up.

That's 6x annual income.

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ManicPixiRiotGrrrl@reddit

what year were they born that he was earning less than a grand a year? they were 100% talking shite

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Cheap-Vegetable-4317@reddit

According to Hansard

The average weekly earnings of adult male manual workers in manufacturing and other industries and services covered by the Ministry's half-yearly inquiries in the North-Western region were £17 11s. 4d. in October, 1964, the latest date for which information is available, compared with £19 0s. 1d. in London and South-Eastern region.

So they 100% were not talking shite.

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Born_Current6133@reddit

My grandad was earning £9 4d I think it was in 1952 as a labourer, I know it was pre 1955 as that was when he started lorry driving and was earning £11 and I can’t remember how many shilling. We were going through this tin he has in the sideboard with his rationing books etc in it and I was surprised and thought he would have gotten more as a lorry driver but he was explaining that he would also be given cash for meals etc and night out money.

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Afraid_Simple_4061@reddit

My dad would have been in his early 80's now. Initially my mum told me he earned £17 per month but I said that didn't sound quite right. Mum is mid 70's

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ManicPixiRiotGrrrl@reddit

that was a common working class salary in the 50s so maybe it was partially true but its still so hard to believe

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Extra_Actuary8244@reddit

As a 25 year old this fills me with rage

I work for the ministry of justice for £25k a year after tax

That’s minimum wage for working 40 hours a week and an extra 15-20 hours a week unpaid for having to do paper work off the clock

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sleepyprojectionist@reddit

My mum has gone as far as offering me money to help with a deposit.

She doesn’t understand that even with a deposit I’m still not in a position to buy.

I’m single, on a below-average salary, and thanks to a string of emergencies, I am in a not inconsiderable amount of debt.

Any freehold property within my budget is typically in need of so much work that I would never be able to afford it.

Most leasehold flats within my budget have a significant enough service charge that it would push them out of affordability.

My mum genuinely doesn’t seem to understand how a single person with what she deems to be a “good job” cannot afford to buy a home.

I will need at least a couple of years to pay off debt and probably a couple more to save for furniture and solicitors fees before I can realistically think of buying a place.

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Possiblyreef@reddit

Just tell her what you earn and times it by x4-5, tell her that amount then ask her to find you something on right move.

Proper-Throwaway-23@reddit

"Twelve miles and it was uphill both ways!"

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JurassicM4rc@reddit

My parents told me they bought their house for £18k sometime in the early 80's. I'd need over 4x that much just for the deposit on an average house today!

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So that's 353 weeks he would have to work to be able to pay for the house. Average house price in London now is 600,000 (ish, according to ai). So, using the same time frame, someone now would need to earn £1700 per WEEK to be able to do the same. Average TA salary in London is 19k to 26k, so let's say 23k, £386.14 per week. So your daughter would need to work for 1554 weeks to be able to afford that house. So that's 4.4 times more than your mom.

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slb609@reddit

£236/week and a purchase price of £83k if we assume 1970 prices.

That’s £12k/year. Doable?

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Farmgirl_88@reddit

Reminds me of a conversation I had with my uncle. It nearly turned into an arguement he was that out of touch.

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lesloid@reddit

To be fair that does mean their house was seven times his salary.

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Eddie173312@reddit

I hear you! Draining isn’t

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Nirnroot_Enjoyer@reddit

My parents aren't too bad to be fair.

Oh god the obsession with cheques and cashing them in.

Wild_Region_7853@reddit

Refusing to use sat nav/google maps/any kind of gps.

They literally have a sat nav built into their car and unlimited data on their phones but will still ask me directions to places, or try to give me directions. If I ask for a postcode the reply is ‘oh you know the old chippy on Stanford street? It’s the second left after that and then you’ll go over a bridge, take the right just after the speed camera and it’s on that road’.

Since retirement my parents have both started using Fahrenheit instead of celcius.

They definitely had enough money for baths so it's not that. It's just seems to be something she enjoys as they had a combi in the 90s too.

Re: modern plumbing - we have a combi boiler so it's hot water on demand, not the older style hot water tank which would run out of hot and then take a while to reheat (so it would make more sense to share.)

When I was a nipper we lived in an area that could get either Anglia, or Thames / LWT. Occasionally the programming was different, particularly at the weekends when LWT made stuff that Anglia wouldn't buy, so you'd rock up at school to talk about something you'd seen, and everyone would look at you blankly.

Then we moved into the Southern area. I can remember the transition from Southern to TVS almost as clearly as Channel 4 starting.

Yes I am fun at parties, thanks very much for asking.

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Juuudes@reddit

Me too. I got my dad to move the aerial to get LWT rather than Anglia so I could watch Thunderbirds.

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SatisfactionMoney426@reddit

It was Land of the Giants on TyneTees for us ...

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This_White_Wolf@reddit

Yep - there were three channel buttons on the TV, labelled 1, 2, and *

My mum told me off for calling golden syrup 'golden syrup' on pancake day!

Turns out golden syrup should just be called 'syrup' as it is the only true syrup! All hail the one true syrup!!

God, my dad also does this. Anytime we whistle, I shit you not, he recites this:

A whistling woman A crowing hen Brings the devil Out of his den.

Just a little snapshot of his insane levels of misogyny there.

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No_Camp_7@reddit

What the fuck did this ever even mean.

Misogyny is sometimes just a load of jumbled words someone pulled out of a tombola.

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Buffy_Geek@reddit

It means that they think that whistling for a girl/woman is morally bad, so doing it is tempting the devil to enter them and take advantage of them. A similar idea to the whole 'you smoke one joint of weed and then eventually are spiraling into heroin addiction'.

This has cool Witchy vibes actually, this is a cool wee rhyme.

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Silhouette_Sneezes@reddit

Ah it definitely does! My father was heading in a different direction as a general motif 🤣 but it is very witchy x

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NaniFarRoad@reddit

I can't whistle because our teachers in primary school would come down on us like a tonne of bricks if we tried.

Later, when I went to secondary school, our (female) headmaster would whistle all the time to get everyone's attention, and I was so jealous.

I'm 51. I've since tried to learn, many times, but never succeeded.

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smelltogetwell@reddit

I was always told it was bad luck for girls to whistle.

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Soapy_Von_Soaps@reddit

Printed out photos from the family group chat and gave a copy to us.

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flangeflangeflanges@reddit

I knew you have to wear them in the back now, but I thought that was a really recent rule and I’ve only recently started doing it. 😂. Yes, I’m old.

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InevitableFox81194@reddit

Honestly, how are you active online and on somewhere like reddit and totally unaware of a law that's been around for decades?!?!

This was a few years ago, but my mum very kindly bought me tickets to a show for my birthday (I forget which one).

The tickets were only available online, which she booked using her iPad.

gloomfilter@reddit

The person who spins them is still a Disc Jockey of course.

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No_Camp_7@reddit

From Denmark. They have a load of Danish words up there and sometimes listening to two people with thick accents talk sounds straight up Scandinavian.

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unseemly_turbidity@reddit

Danish for sweets is slik. Ket doesn't sound like a Scandinavian word for sweets. It's quite close to the word for meat though, so if it's Scandinavian, its changed its meaning.

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RelationshipLife6739@reddit

Yeah so ket is actually a Nordic word that’s changed meaning over times. Originally meaning meat or rotten flesh. To over time become the meaning for rotting flesh / rubbish. And as sweets became a thing in the past couple hundred years and people calling sweets rubbish (as in bad for you) and then ket meaning a similar thing. Ket evolved to sweets as rubbish as rotten flesh or meat. Pretty cool!

If you look at the Nordic influence on Geordie and northumbria slang there’s quite a lot. Like hyem, bairn, fell etc

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setokaiba22@reddit

I still hear ket quite a lot in the north and not for drugs but sweets tbf

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rosegoldqueen28@reddit

Bloody love a bit ket me like 🤣

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DeviousLittleCupcake@reddit

Superb, on a similar vein, moving up north for work and it was one of the lads birthdays, he comes up to me and announces it's his birthday so there's some spice in the canteen if I want some

Wow! Ok. Thank you! Was half convinced you'd say;

Poo_Poo_La_Foo@reddit

My dad recently referred to something as "Two and Six"

He is 72.

Top-Aspect-8827@reddit (OP)

My mum didn't have a car seat for me when leaving the hospital (1992). Took me home in her arms in the back of a taxi.

*Her: "Look! Look! Over there!"

Me: "What?!"

Her: "There's a rainbow!"*

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TeikaDunmora@reddit

Not to make you feel old, but my mum always asks that when it's easy to see if the passenger has put it on and her car has a wee bit on the screen that shows which back seatbelts are plugged in. Also, I'm pretty sure the car will beep constantly if the front seats aren't wearing their seatbelts.

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Confident_Dig_7834@reddit

My dad (in his late 70s) still does temperature in Fahrenheit despite me constantly trying to tell him we were not taught this at school (born in 80s) and the grandkid’s definitely weren’t taught in.

Then every time he tries to teach us how to convert it to Celsius rather than just using Celsius in the first place which he absolutely knows 🙄

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Foundation_Wrong@reddit

We still do that ! In old money that’s… I’m 66 my husband is 72

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FunCamel8855@reddit

My dad still insists on printing out MapQuest directions for any trip longer than an hour.

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Bi5hBa5hBo5h@reddit

My nana used to just hold the belt around her if she was in the back 😂🙄

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BuncleCar@reddit

And £1.50 was thirty bob.

My mother, born 1918, used to talk of hats and other things costing 19,11,3. Which was 19s11 and 3 farthings, or 19s11 3/4d

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E420CDI@reddit

it's a saga now

Holiday?

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BamberGasgroin@reddit

Aye, to hell mate.

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StrangerWest2756@reddit

My mum still keeps a physical phone book with everyone’s numbers written in it.

I was in a charity shop the other day and overheard an older lady ‘complimenting’ a young woman on her outfit:

“Look at you, very cool! You’re wearing ski boots but you look ready to go to the beach!”

To be granted my grandad left school at 15 and did a few office jobs. Then he stepped into an office job at British Gas. They saw he was smart and he did all his training with them to become a petrochemical engineer with time off/night school as needed. They even paused whilst he did his national service.

Asked my old man what he thought the odds of Spurs getting relegated might be.

He replied "I wouldn't know. Betting is a mugs game"

Debating with my parents what we should buy for my big brother and SIL upon the birth of their first baby. My dad (born 1943) says “well, they won’t need a car seat he, so not that”.

Me “they will, how are they going to get the baby home in the car?”

Dad “you don’t need a car seat for babies that small”

Ae went round in circles for a while until I should him the law!

I appreciate my brother may not have come home in a car seat (born 1978), but I (born 1990) definitely did. We have photos to prove it.

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Champagne_Bunnny@reddit

My ex partner argued I didn't need a car seat for our baby and that was only 16 years ago! I was livid

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Remote-Pool7787@reddit

The cash machines had run out of cash

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Prestigious-Garbage5@reddit

OMG! I'm 73 and even I think most of these comments are crazy! 🤦‍♀️ I can only apologise on behalf of my own contemporaries!

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AmishHoeFights@reddit

I'm only in my late 50s but this post is making me feel like a very modern man!

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Prize-Hospital-454@reddit

My mum refers to a megaphone as a "loud hailer"

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Nukes-For-Nimbys@reddit

TBF "megaphone" is an Americanism, loudhailer is correct strictly speaking.

I was also in the car with him once and he said "Hmm, I wonder what [my partner, who does not live with him] will cook me for tea tonight." His partner works as a carer.

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